Savage Love
I'm totally willing to indulge my partner's kink, but I'm not sure I'm doing it right.
By Dan Savage
I'm a straight man married to a bisexual lady, which is something I would recommend to all other straight men in the world. We're in our late twenties, have been together for eight years, married four. (I know: too young and too soon, but we'll see how it turns out.)
My wife has a much higher sex drive than I do, and she's also into kink, as a domme. My fantasies are vanilla, but I'm GGG.
The problem, as I see it, is that she doesn't initiate. She's tied me up and spanked me a handful of times, and it was fine.
Could I have done something wrong? How do you get spanked wrong? When I've asked her, she says that it takes a lot of energy to top, which makes sense, but we've done plenty of other high-energy activities. Communication is excellent between us. How do we get past this?
— Beaten Up Not Nearly Enough
The issue, BUNNE, can be summed up in three little words: "it was fine." For you, it was fine. Not great, not mind-blowing, not something you love and can't live without. It was fine.
Some people into BDSM are content just to be indulged by their vanilla partners. But others are only interested in doing BDSM with other folks who are into BDSM. That's because there's a huge difference between tying up and spanking someone who's into it — really into it — and tying up and spanking someone who is doing it for you, for love, and for GGG chits. If your wife has experienced the rush of dominating a simpatico submissive — the thrill of finding someone's limits and pushing them, the charge that comes from knowing you're making someone's deepest, darkest fantasies a reality — then being indulged by her loving husband, who is more than willing to endure the odd spanking to maintain his GGG bona fides, simply isn't going to cut it.
I'm a fifty-year-old gay guy and I've always found anal to be painful. After trying it about six times over the past thirty-plus years (only once to "completion"), I gave up. Recently I met a great guy who would like to try it, and though I love the body contact, the sweaty, panting excitement, and the idea of being penetrated, I've resisted. Are some guys not capable of standing the pain? The guys I've screwed over the years have enjoyed it. Any suggestions?
P.S.: The library computers block Buck Angel.
— Gentleman Asking You, Anal Sex Sage
Buttsex: some folks just can't take it, GAYASS, and you may be one of them. But you can have all the sweat, pants, and excitement of anal without the penetration. Just grease up his dick, grease up your inner thighs, clamp your thighs around his dick, and let him pound away. Extra credit: reach down between your legs and cup your greasy hands together on the opposite side as he pseudofucks you from behind so that his dick, once it pokes through your thighs, still feels as though it's "inside" something, even if that something isn't your spun-glass ass.
My daughter is fourteen-years old and she has been searching on the internet for "sneezing fetish" information. She reads articles about it every day. She reads stories about sneezing (some with sexual acts in them!) and watches YouTube videos of people sneezing every day! Yes, she might be curious if she heard the term "sneezing fetish" from someone, but no normal person would search about it on the internet every day! How can anyone actually associate sneezing with sex — and she's only fourteen! It makes me uncomfortable reading this stuff! Is this normal? I am so worried!
— Worried Mom
Kinky people aren't assigned their kinks during their freshman orientation sessions at university, WM, and no one has ever contracted a fetish — like a cold? — just because someone uttered the name of it aloud. (And no fetishist has ever been cured by Mom freaking out.) People tend to become aware of their kinks, and start scouring the web in search of information about them, right around puberty. Which means your daughter is perfectly normal — a perfectly normal, perfectly kinky kid.
Like lots of young kinksters, she may be consumed by her kink now; she's just realized that she's not alone, and she's busily reading and viewing everything she can about it. It's unlikely that her kink will remain so all-consuming, WM. Sooner or later she'll relax about it, and relax into it, and one day she'll have a very nice boyfriend — or girlfriend — who loves her enough to indulge her harmless kink or, better still, she'll meet someone online she clicks with emotionally and intellectually who also shares her kink.
In the meantime, WM, if it makes you uncomfortable to read what your daughter is reading online, stop reading it.
I'm a nineteen-year-old heterosexual female. When I get a boyfriend, I get so nervous that I get physically sick. It makes dating very stressful and it feels like I can't have a normal relationship because I have to think about not throwing up when I really just want to enjoy his company. I feel particularly sick when things start to heat up with a boy. Now I try to stay out of relationships because I don't think anyone will want to deal with this problem. How can I help condition my way out of it? Should I see another shrink?
— Nervous In Candlelight
Yes, NIC, see a shrink — and a pot dealer/medical marijuana provider.
I've been married to my amazing husband for eleven years. I'm straight and love being with two men at once and he's bi so that makes for crazy-hot-fun times. We have all the kids we want, so he's had a vasectomy. I'm still fertile but don't want to end up pregnant by one of our thirds, so we're taking every conceivable precaution. (See what I did there?) My question is this — if we're performing oral on our third and he comes in my husband's mouth and then my husband goes down on me, could I get pregnant via oral transfer?
— Baby Shop Is Closed
There's a famous case of a fifteen-year-old girl who was born without a vagina — but with everything else — who managed to get pregnant via oral sex. Well, via oral sex and a knife fight and a life-threatening wound that allowed the spermatozoa in the girl's gut to swim into her uterus. This — according to a friend-of-a-friend who knows someone who was there — is not an urban legend. In fact, the story appeared in a 1988 issue of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and bounced around the blogs for a few weeks last winter after a blogger at Discover unearthed it.
Anyway, BSIC, the moral of the story: never say never. But provided your husband swallows and doesn't gargle, and provided there isn't any semen dribbling down his chin, I'd put your chances of getting pregnant under the circumstances you've described at pretty darn close to zero. (And not to ruin your day/three-way or anything, but you do know that vasectomies have a 1-in-2,000 failure rate, right? If you do get knocked up after one of those three-ways, BSIC, the bonus baby could still be your husband's.)
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
Commentarium (29 Comments)
Wow. I really relate to Nervous in Candlelight. I'm afraid I can't be very helpful. But this is why I have never understood why some people "long" to feel butterflies in their stomach.
Some people's butterflies are huge eagles flapping around in their stomach.
@nn, Hmm I guess other people's soft butterflies are pleasing rather than close-to-nausea feeling.
If the vasectomy patient has had the proper number of follow up visits he would know without question if the procedure was succesful.
"...if it makes you uncomfortable to read what your daughter is reading online, stop reading it."
Um, no. It's parents' responsibility to know what their kids are reading and doing, both online and off. The mom shouldn't necessarily confront her daughter over the sneeze fetish stuff, but she should be aware of it - until she grows up.
um, no. It is parents' responsibility to try to help their children grow up with a healthy approach to sexuality. Knowing what your kids are reading and doing at all times is creepy, first, and a rather impossible task, second. Thinking that you have the responsibility or right to deny a teenager some modicum of privacy with their sexuality is just fucked up.
I was about to make a post agreeing with wb's viewpoint, and then thought about it a little more. 14 is a little early for total privacy. I think her mom's probably a little nosy (searches and stuff? Why are you looking at EVERYTHING she does?) but I also know that kids do some fucked up shit online. By the time your kids are 16, you shouldn't be looking at their computer stuff anymore. More worrying is the fact that she cares her daughter has a fetish at all, especially a pretty harmless one like sneezing. If she was into bleeding and stuff, it might be worth writing a letter, but she should be happy that allergies get her daughter off so easily!
I don't know, I think the 14 year old group is a good example of when parents should start giving their kids pretty significant freedom. You're already in high school at that point. I think that falls comfortably within 'overprotective.' I think when you look as a 14 year old as an adult, they seem very small and very young -- but when you think about how life was as a 14 year old, at least for me and most of my friends, it's right at the cornerstone of voracious porn consumption and thinking that saying offensive shit is hilarious. Things that people grow out of, but really don't need parental supervision for.
When I was 14, I knew well enough to clear my browser history completely when I looked at weird shit.
a coworker once told me her parents explained orgasm to the kids as being "like a sneeze"
I'm not suggesting that the parent do ANYTHING to limit the 14-year-old's freedom. I'm just saying that parents need to be aware of what their kids are up to. Of course the level of detailed knowledge you, as a parent, should be after is going to decrease as the kid becomes more mature. Kids mature at different rates, and it's the parents' job to judge this and determine what level of knowledge (and, if necessary, intervention) is appropriate.
I think that for most 14 year olds it's very important that parents know in some detail what their kids of this age are up to online. I don't think it's creepy at all for a parent to keep track of this. Yes, kids that age do need their privacy, but parents also have a responsibility to protect their kids from threats they're not mature enough to handle. If, in the course of keeping track of this, a mom finds evidence of a sneeze fetish or something equally strange but harmless, the appropriate course of action is to not say or do anything - but Dan Savage's advice to stop looking is misguided.
I sense that the helicopter parent just wants to make sure her daughter is safe and that her fetish isn't harmful. Now that she knows it's not, hopefully she'll back off. Checking what your kid's been up to every so often--even snooping on occasion--isn't harmful. Just as long as it's not every day and you keep your distance. I'd want to know what sites my 14-year-old was visiting, too. But more than a cursory look? No thanks.
Seriously, as a parent, wouldn't you want to know--and email Dan Savage for safety/possible intervention advice-- if you found out your kid might have an autoerotic asphyxiation fetish? It's not about invading their privacy or curtailing their sexuality or identity, it's about safety. (Likewise, if I saw my daughter made daily visits to Pro-Ana (anorexia/bulimia) websites, I might sense there was a problem and intervene.) Doesn't mean I'd hack into her email or read every single page she ever visited online, but if my kid is 14, my responsibilities include knowing big-picture-wise, what she's up to online.
I wonder if "Nervous in Candlelight" might have been sexually molested in the past and has blocked the memory. She's having a pretty powerful reaction to simple dating.
@kc, vasectomies have been known to "re-canalize" years later, so even after follow-up visits, your vasectomy can eventually fail.
Modern psychology discredits the idea that people repress painful memories. Memory has very strong roots in emotion, so a painful event such as sexual abuse would be rooted firmly in one's memory. Studies about repressed memories often attribute the "repressed memory" to leading questions asked by the hypnotist who is trying to bring the supposed memory to the surface.
That is incorrect. There have been cases where repressed memories have been planted. But people with traumatic history often repress those events because they are too painful to remember and cope with.
you can repress a lot of an event but usually some small seemingly insignificant detail will stick around and always make you uncomfortable.
I can totally relate to NIC- I have had this problem for years. The answer I have found is this- find someone who is adult enough to understand and give you lots of support
Dan's advice was spot-on on the first one. The LW is doing everything right, but it IS a different (and superior) experience to indulge in a sexual practice with someone who is as turned on by it as you are.
Also, I want those shoes.
Agreed on both points, but especially the shoes!
To Baby Shop Is Closed : it's good to worry about pregnancy and all, but protection is about more than procreation, my friends. If you're sharing fluids, you're opening yourself up to STDs. (especially if your third, even if he's a regular third, has other partners who have other partners who have.... ) PSA - use protection, folks.
GAYASS, I would suggest starting with some light ass play. Fingers, toys first and build up to full on penentration. Once you've loosening up, so to speak, you'll find it more enjoyable.
a coworker once told me her parents explained orgasm to the kids as being "like a sneeze"
Dear NIC - Are you sure you're heterosexual? My relationships with men always made me feel stressed, claustrophobic, and nervous. I never lasted more than 6 months with any guy. And guess what? I finally figured out it was because I'm a lesbian. Now, I date women and my relationships are so much more awesome and relaxed. It's great. So, think if this possibly applies to you as well. - XEB
My experience could have been different, but I can't help but find Nervous in Candlelight's situation familiar. In my case, the paralyzing nausea was a result of several underlying anxieties:
-I didn't actually want to be with the boy I was with
-I didn't know anything about sex, or even physical pleasure as it applied to me
-My experience with boys up until that point involved uncomfortable and boring dry humping
-I wasn't ready to have sex
In my case, I ended up buying my first vibrator. Sometimes half the battle is giving yourself the time and space to learn about what feels right without anyone watching, or more importantly without anyone else in the room waiting for you to figure it out.
I heard that when you sneeze, you use the same muscles (or enough of the same muscles) as when you orgasm...
the answer to bunne seems right on
Can someone find a link to that journal article? I found a bunch of references to it by Googling, but not the actual article.
That's way more clever than I was exepcting. Thanks!